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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24562903">They Hammered in His Teeth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jribbing/pseuds/jribbing'>jribbing</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dead horses [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Podfic Available, Protective Dean Winchester, Suicidal Sam Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 02:55:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,487</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24562903</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jribbing/pseuds/jribbing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has a secret.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester &amp; Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dead horses [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970458</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>306</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Sam Winchester WHUMP</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>They Hammered in His Teeth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please heed the tags.</p><p> "Your branches have attracted a mighty wind. You could go mad."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He wakes up early, because he hadn’t really slept. He makes Dean pancakes. He does his chores. He does Dean’s chores. He organizes his minuscule pile of belongings. Then he writes a note. </em>
</p><p><em> The rest of the day, he gives to his brother. And he is so light, like something lighter; and so wide, like something wider. He thinks he could be this person all the time, if he were better. Dean watches him like he’s performing a grand illusion, and he is thrilled and indulgent — because he </em>can<em> be a person all the time, this person, that better person all the time, exceeding Sam’s laughable reach. </em></p><p>
  <em> His shoes squeak for the entirety of the twenty story ascent. The stairwell is hot. The air is weak. Sam is calm. He walks, a withered ghost across the roof, steady. Sure. Yet a sieve. The ledge isn’t as high up as he’d projected. One hiked leg, and suddenly he’s standing above it, on it — a balance. There’s concrete down there, and rock, and asphalt. And black. Bottomless black. Freedom black. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He closes his eyes; the weight of gravity wraps around his dangling right foot, testing the waters of reality, testing the waters of irreversibility. It’s so easy. This was so easy. He could have done this sooner. This world, hard-wrought. This choice, nothing. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Sam!” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Dean, in the distance. Looking for him. Always Dean. Always looking. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Yo, Sammy!” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam sighs, allows his lids to flutter open. He hears the stomp of combat boots approaching. When the access door eventually slams open and his brother lays the intensity of his survey on his shoulders, Sam is a reasonably unalarming distance from the precipice. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Sam! Answer me when I’m callin’ you. Christ, I was gone like five minutes and you pull a Houdini.” Dean sweeps over him in a tidal wave. Sam doesn’t remember saying anything. His imagination hadn’t gotten this far — hadn’t created an after. It was like meeting his brother for the first time.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Dean’s grinning at Sam. Maybe he has a secret too — different, the sugar kind, the kind he reveals to Sam immediately because he’s so goddamn excited about it. “Come on, I got something I want to show you.”  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Somehow, for some reason, Sam lets him. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> That night, Dean drives them out to a field in the middle of nowhere, where they set off a cardboard box full of fireworks and lose themselves to a two-person universe of color, spark, and smoke. </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> November 2nd, 1999 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> April 3rd, 2002 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> November 3rd, 2005 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> January 5th, 2007 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> May 2nd, 2008 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> July 4th, 2008 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> May 14th, 2009 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> August 24th, 2009 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> May 2nd, 2010 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> February 16th, 2012 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> July 4th, 2013 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> May 21st, 2015 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> June 17th, 2016 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <em> June 1st, 2017 </em> </span>
</p><p>
  <em> Sam has a secret. </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> December 13th, 2018 </span>
</p><p>Sam has a secret.</p><p>He wakes up early, because he hadn’t really slept. He makes Dean pancakes. He does their research. He does their laundry. He cleans the Impala (with discretion). He organizes his room. He organizes the library. He organizes his laptop. Then he types a note.</p><p>The rest of the day, he gives to his brother. Every one of Dean’s jokes is funny. Every song Dean chooses is loud. Every piece of food Dean waves under Sam’s nose is acceptable. Sam perceives it in Dean’s expression — the goodness of the moments.</p><p>They’re on the couch. Dean picked the movie, and isn’t annoying in the least when he quotes every single line, terrible accents notwithstanding. Sam doesn’t complain when Dean hogs the popcorn, or deposits his gross, sock clad feet on his lap. It gets late, later than he intended, and they inevitably fall asleep, because they’re too old and too tired. Ensuant, Sam blinks into the dim quiet of the dead-hour atmosphere. Dean’s a buzz saw, ferocious. </p><p>It’s time.</p><p>He stealthily untangles himself, gets up.</p><p>There’s a gun in his room. </p><p>There’s a gun underneath his pillow.</p><p>Hard-wrought, nothing.</p><p>But...Dean rouses, a predator, and catches his wrist as he slides past. A ferryman, his brother. With a head.</p><p>“Bad dream?” He rumbles. Sam looks down at him, stares down at him. Dean reads into his silence. “Want to talk about it?”</p><p>Sam quirks a half smile, crucially arrested, and finds himself lowered back onto the smooth surface of the coffee table behind him without further prompting. “Good dream, actually. A memory.” It’s muted, through a film of colliding past/present, and the words aren’t his own. The words are life, taking flight outside his throat.</p><p>A raised brow of skeptical curiosity, “Really? ‘Bout what?”</p><p>More staring sounds, and breathing sounds, and skin picking sounds. “It was that 4th you stole all those fireworks. You came to get me, surprise me, on the roof.”</p><p>Dean’s soft now, wispy in the gaze, willow in the chest, “Yeah, I ‘member. You have that dream a lot?” </p><p>“Yeah, except it’s different. In the dream.” He murmurs.</p><p>“How?” And the way Dean is asking, Sam recognizes he is without shield. He’s not asking in the way he thinks he’s asking. He’s not asking in the way that matches the answer, but Sam is going to answer anyway because he asked.</p><p>“You don’t come. And I jump.”</p><p>Dean doesn’t move, or creak, or seemingly inhale. He’s laying there, in that casual sprawl, having been delivered a sort of unspeakable blow. “Sammy,” he whispers, in pain, in dust, in the agony pit beyond surprise. He sits up, very slowly. Their knees are touching. There’s a point on the horizon, suddenly visible.</p><p>“You made pancakes today.” A deluge, disguised as statement.</p><p>Sam only nods. What else is there?</p><p>Dean looks as if he wants to flee and get closer at the same time. His voice fluctuates, escaping him. “You...why didn't...what stopped you?”</p><p>“Which time?”</p><p>And that was cruel. Sam is cruel. He knows this. He is not better, because he will never be better. Because his sins of omission will never outrun his sins of commission. “You did, that first time. On the roof. You were there. So I didn’t. The times after…” Sam falters. He has so much that has been forced inside of him that is unaccountable. So much that is unexplainable. He never wanted these teeth. These teeth are not his. They were hammered in, one by one, like nails into his gums and the bones of his jaw. He was told now he must bite. And he just wants to stop biting. He can’t say any of that, though. Dean can’t hear any of that.</p><p>“The times after...I’d already made some big messes, and I didn’t want to leave you to clean them up.” He shrugs, “I figured, stick around, fix it, and then...but I keep making bigger and bigger messes, so….” He’s moving fast, faster than Dean can possibly handle, given the manner of his frozen sibling, save for the clenching of anger fueled fingers. Sam barrels onward —  a leaky faucet limping across the finish line. “So I think about that first time, you know, before any of it. Before Jess, and Lucifer, and Kevin, and Charlie. I dream about how much would have been prevented if I’d just...done it. How many people would still be alive. And...it’s good. It’s a good dream.”</p><p>Something tragic hovers in the space separating their bodies. Dean’s hands raise, and he struggles with where to put them, as if on the verge of shattering an invisible glass fortification. Finally, his palms on the chilled, stiff sides of Sam’s neck. Pulse points, grasping at pulse points. “I got a lot of things to say to you. But I can’t right now.” Fingernails, Sam feels fingernails. “But I don’t want to fuck this up, and I need you to be here. I need you to stay. To hear me. And tell me what a jackass I am.”</p><p>Sam laughs; it rips like a sob. Dean does too. The air whistles into their nostrils. Men, with boys inside. “Sammy,” like Sam isn’t at attention, like Sam isn’t forever unflinchingly toward him — but Dean will always use his name like a stopgap. “Can you be here?”</p><p>Sam has a secret.</p><p>He thinks about the simplicity of falling. The simplicity of surrender. It’s the roof, but in his mouth. But in reverse. It’s easy. Easier, even — into the fever bright sensation of his brother’s overwhelming invasion, his little entwined sphere of infinite regress.</p><p>Sam has a secret, buried deep beneath the red mush horror of his brain: he is going to kill himself.</p><p>“Yeah,” he chokes.</p><p>But not today.</p><p>Today he’ll stay.</p><p> </p><p>END</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>All the dates are significant, according to the chronological timeline of the show wherein the season 6 and season 8 year long gaps are factored in.</p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24764140">[Podfic] They Hammered in His Teeth</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/jribbing/pseuds/jribbing">jribbing</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div></div></div>
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